Archive for the 'Store Events' Category

Tom Levinson reads from All That’s Holy
Saturday, November 15, 7:30pm
 
Tom Levinson says he’s no expert on religion, just a guy who set out on a road trip with a notepad and asked dozens of ordinary Americans to open up and tell him about God. Thousands of miles, scores of interviews, 305 pages and four years later, his journey has resulted in the recently published book All That’s Holy, a conversational documentary on contemporary American religious experience that’s earned acclaim from industry journal Publishers Weekly and veteran writers such as Joyce Carol Oates.
 
Levinson, a 29 year old University of Chicago law student, said he paid little attention to religion growing up in an unobservant Jewish family in Manhattan. In the book, Levinson borrows the terms “cafeteria Catholic” and “mess hall Muslim” from his subjects to describe the way Americans pick and choose among traditions as if in a buffet line.
 
In his account, a white New Mexican woman converts to Sikhism by way of yoga, a Cambodian Buddhist treats her cancer with both Western medicine and traditional healing, a southern Baptist says a “Hail Mary” when her daughter gives birth, Hindus worship Jesus icons, neo-pagans transform Halloween into a Celtic ceremony, Orthodox Jews keep kosher but smoke cigarettes, and Muslim women veil themselves but stand up for gender equality in the workplace. The book is light on analysis and heavy on anecdote, which Levinson said is by design.
 
“I wanted it to be as accessible as possible,” he said. “I see the book more as a conversation starter within faith communities … for example, do Baptists in Kentucky know the Muslims in Lexington? If not, why not?” These are the questions he said he hopes his book will encourage readers to ask themselves.
 
Tom Levinson will read and sign copies of All That’s Holy

M. Dylan Raskin reads from Little New York Bastard
Monday November 3rd 8PM
 
Meet M. Dylan Raskin (MDR to friends). At 22, he’s the opposite of hip: a working-class college dropout and world-class malcontent who lives with his mother in Queens. Make that Flushing-stinking-Queens, to be precise”and if you know anything about the joint you know that it’s a wretched, horrible place.” Don’t get him wrong: it’s not that he doesn’t like New York, exactly, it’s just that lately he’s felt more and more at odds with everything-his family, his generation, his hometown, even himself. One day he gets fed up and decides to take his freedom on the road, setting off for Chicago in a quixotic attempt to turn his life around.
 
Equal parts road story, coming-of-age memoir, and existential manifesto, LITTLE NEW YORK BASTARD is the true story of an outsider for the ages, a mixed-up kid who knows what he wants in life but has no idea how to get it. Its also an exhilarating addition to the literature of alienated young people looking for meaning in a world whose values seem utterly upside down.
 
Author bio:
M. Dylan Raskin was born in Queens, New York.
 
He will be reading and signing his book.